Reconstructor of Laws

Lin Xiu was awakened by the sound of metal scraping.

It sounded like rusted gears struggling to turn in the dark, stabbing pain into his eardrums.

His temples throbbed as if countless fine needles were tapping against them; cold sweat clung to the back of his neck, plastering wetly against his skin and sending waves of icy discomfort through him.

His fingers unconsciously dug into the gaps in the wooden floorboards. Splinters pierced his fingertips, throbbing faintly.

The musty scent unique to old book pages lingered beneath his nose, mixed with a rusty tang—the smell of his own blood dripping from his chin onto the open fragment of the Dimensional Eye, blooming into dark red specks across the parchment and giving off a faintly metallic sweetness.

"Vital signs stable," the Oracle System's electronic voice said through his earpiece, carrying a trace of mechanical concern. "You remained in consciousness space for 17 minutes and 32 seconds.

Last memory node: Brooklyn Bridge, spacetime disturbance."

Lin Xiu slowly pushed himself upright.

The muscles in his arms ached as if he had just gone through a brutal fight.

His left hand was pressing down on a diamond-shaped sheet of metal. Pale violet light flowed across its surface, as though stars from the night sky had been crushed and embedded within it.

It felt cold and smooth, but its edges were unnaturally sharp, as if they could slice through the air.

He had never seen this thing before, yet it felt strangely familiar—as if, in some forgotten dream, he had used the Nanite Swarm to carve patterns into it countless times.

"This is..." The instant his fingertips touched the sheet's edge, a burning sensation surged from his armor core, like flames spreading outward from his chest.

A narrow seam automatically opened in his breastplate, revealing the flickering quantum chip within. The metal sheet was drawn in as if by a magnet, embedding itself with a crisp ding.

The Oracle System's alarm abruptly rose. "Magic-technology compatibility signal detected!

Beginning topological analysis... 5%... 20%..."

Pale golden patterns surfaced over Lin Xiu's armor, reflected in his pupils. The Nanite Swarm was rapidly restructuring.

He could clearly sense something between energy and law pouring through the chip into his sea of consciousness—not the Chitauri's violent energy, not Stark Industries' precise pulses, and certainly not Asgard's thunderous divine arts, but... something closer to "language."

"Topological map generation complete." There was a rare fluctuation in the system's voice. "Target identified as a simplified version of Kamar-Taj's 'Dimensional Anchoring' technique. Magical resonance frequency can be synchronized within an error margin of 0.03 hertz."

Lin Xiu's breathing suddenly quickened.

He remembered how the magical runes on the bridge last night had pulled the biometal apart into threads; he remembered the bizarre red glow that had appeared on the shells of the silver Nanobots as they devoured Chitauri energy—it had not been rejection, but... learning.

"Oracle, simulate a magical matrix model." His voice trembled, as if he had touched the hem of truth for the first time. "Use existing technological parameters as the foundation, then integrate the resonance frequency from the topological map."

A holographic projection unfolded before him.

Pale blue quantum chains and golden magical runes began to intertwine. Their initial collision shattered violently, like sparks striking ice, yet on the third overlap, they suddenly stabilized and formed a spiraling vortex of light.

Lin Xiu watched the streams of data dancing at the heart of the vortex, his Adam's apple bobbing. "It worked... This is a stable structure capable of carrying both kinds of energy..."

"Ding—remote monitoring signal connected." The system prompt interrupted his elation.

Lin Xiu looked up toward the window. Moonlight streamed through stained glass and fell across the church murals in motley colors, only to be swallowed by shadow in an instant.

He knew it was not a cloud—Kamar-Taj's sorcerers always liked to announce their presence this way.

"He is approaching the critical point." An aged voice drifted in from every direction, like crumpled silk, carrying a suppressed sense of danger.

Lin Xiu turned and saw the surveillance camera in the library's corner glowing a ghostly green. It was Icarus Vaughn's exclusive frequency.

This "reality anchor," who always kept his face shrouded in mist, was watching him through some kind of magical projection, his fingers lightly tapping an invisible crystal ball.

"If this continues, it may open a deeper passage." There was no emotion in Icarus's voice. "The Ancient One once said that all forcibly fused laws leave behind cracks."

Another voice emerged from the darkness, humming like wind passing over an empty bottle. "Then let him see the true price."

Lin Xiu's Nanite Swarm suddenly formed spikes around his wrist, piercing his skin and drawing a bead of blood.

He recognized that voice—amid the dizziness on Brooklyn Bridge, amid the sound of pages turning in consciousness space, the whisperer had always lingered at the edge of perception, like a thorn rooted in his nerves.

"Oracle, locate the source." He lowered his voice. His throat was dry, as though he had swallowed grit.

"The signal is shielded by dimensional magic and cannot be tracked." The system's answer made his back tense.

But Lin Xiu did not linger.

He grabbed the fragment of the Dimensional Eye from the table and pulled a yellowed map from between the pages—a map he had found only after spending three hours combing through old archives at the city records office. Faded words at its edge read: "Vimholl Gate."

"Vimholl" meant "the world's seam" in Old Norse.

Lin Xiu stared at the red X on the map—Saint Mary's Church in Brooklyn's old district, abandoned for twenty years. Even the Avengers' database contained only one blurry aerial photograph of it.

As night deepened, he stood before the church ruins.

The evening wind howled through the broken walls, carrying dust and dead leaves.

Ivy coiled around the stone pillars, swaying in the wind like struggling arms.

The stained glass had shattered into stars across the floor, and every step produced a crisp crunch.

Lin Xiu's Nanite Swarm slipped into the cracks between the bricks and extended downward according to the map's markings. Three seconds later, a hollow echo rose from beneath the ground.

"Underground chamber detected. Depth approximately eight meters. Entrance located beneath the altar." The Oracle System's prompt made his fingers tremble slightly.

He pulled away the torn cloth covering the altar, revealing a bluestone slab carved with Norse runes. With a gentle push, the slab split apart like tofu, exposing stone steps leading downward.

The chamber was more spacious than he had expected.

On the stone wall at its deepest point, countless runes flowed—red, gold, and violet—twisting and reforming like living things. Every rearrangement caused the magical concentration in the air to surge by ten percent.

Lin Xiu's armor automatically deployed a protective layer, but the Nanite Swarm rushed uncontrollably toward the stone wall. Patterns of light synchronized with the runes surfaced across their metal shells.

"Oracle, capture the rune frequencies in real time!" His voice mixed with the swarm's hum. "Have the swarm simulate the fluctuations and attempt synchronization!"

The data streams in the holographic projection flickered madly.

The instant the Nanite Swarm's vibration frequency completely overlapped with the runes, the stone wall suddenly rang with a bell-like hum. A translucent spatial rift slowly opened, revealing darkness on the other side—not ordinary darkness, but the kind that devoured light and rendered every sense useless.

"You have crossed the line." A voice as sharp as an icicle pierced from the edge of the rift.

Lin Xiu looked up and saw Icarus Vaughn standing there. Mist no longer obscured his face, revealing youthful features that did not match his age. Light like collapsing galaxies flowed through his pupils.

His right hand rested on the bronze dagger at his waist, the mark of Kamar-Taj's "reality anchors."

"If this isn't the answer," Lin Xiu did not retreat. The magical light membrane and quantum flow across his armor began to resonate, sending ripples of energy surging between them. "Then tell me—what is?"

Icarus's gaze swept over the metal sheet on his breastplate, over the still-flowing runes on the stone wall, and finally settled on the gradually expanding rift. "The answer?

You think you are searching for laws, but you are actually prying loose shackles.

When the rift grows large enough..." He paused, and his voice suddenly dropped. "Something will crawl through from the other side."

Lin Xiu stared into the depths of the rift.

He heard something like a heartbeat, slow and heavy, each beat making his Nanite Swarm emit a mournful wail.

Yet beneath that heartbeat, he heard a clearer call—like a mother's lullaby to a sleeping child, like the hum before a Quantum Collider activated in a laboratory, like the song the Nanite Swarm had sung in his blood when he first touched the core of the Balder Armor.

"I have to know," he said. His voice was as soft as a sigh, yet carried unquestionable resolve.

Icarus's fingers tightened around the dagger's hilt.

But at that moment, a hand suddenly reached out from the rift—not a human hand. Its skin was a sickly bluish gray, its nails long as blades, and fluorescent green slime dripped from its fingertips.

Lin Xiu's pupils contracted sharply.

His Nanite Swarm instantly formed a shield, but with a light push from that hand, the shield shattered like papier-mâché.

The slime dripped onto the ground, corroding black holes that hissed and smoked.

"This is the price." Emotion finally entered Icarus's voice, a warning that was almost compassionate. "You can still turn back."

But Lin Xiu's gaze passed over that hand and fixed on the deeper darkness within the rift.

He saw countless points of light floating in the darkness like stardust scattered by the wind, each one speaking of knowledge he had never touched.

He remembered the character for "awaken" carved by the Nanobots on the bridge; he remembered the formula that did not belong to this universe flashing through the chip when the Oracle System analyzed the magical topological map; he remembered the trembling sensation of finally becoming whole when technology and magic resonated inside him.

He stepped forward.

The darkness within the spatial rift suddenly churned, and the owner of that hand let out a piercing scream.

Icarus's chant exploded beside his ears, but Lin Xiu's armor had already activated the preparatory sequence for Final Fusion—quantum flow and magical light membrane completely entwined, forming a spiraling protective barrier around him.

"Oracle, record all data." His voice was torn apart by the energy storm, yet it reached the system core with perfect clarity. "If I don't come back..."

The rift suddenly widened.

The last thing Lin Xiu saw before his figure was swallowed by darkness was Icarus's shocked expression, and the runes on the stone wall suddenly freezing into a symbol he had never seen before—that symbol resembled the metal sheet on his breastplate, except it bore an additional bloody crack.

And somewhere far away, the Void Watcher's whisper drifted into the closing rift amid the roar of collapsing space. "...Now, he should understand what a 'reconstructor of laws' truly is..."

The words were swallowed by darkness.

Only Lin Xiu's Nanite Swarm remained in the underground chamber. One of them was using its metal forelimbs to carve a new rune beside the crack in the stone wall—a blood-red character meaning "advance."